Malkyrs – Preview

Bad: Clearly still a decent amount of work to be done, Sometimes a bit vague

User Score

9.5

(2 votes)

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Rating: 9.5/10 (2 votes cast)

Playing card games is often very fun, exciting yet relaxing enough for you to venture out into the world to play against other players. Sadly, it’s often hard to find a community for certain specific card games, and some of them actually end up costing a pretty penny for you to create a deck to your liking. Nonetheless, with games as Magic: The Gathering, Cardfight!! Vanguard, Yu-Gi-Oh!, you can see that card games are still very popular, but that it’s also hard for a company to create their own and have an impact on an already saturated market. This is where Malkyrs comes in with their very original card game, where they combine actual cards with NFC tags with a digital game, allowing you to have the feel and look of real cards, while not having to go out and find a likeminded community. We noticed the game was still in its very early stages, but so far we loved what we saw.

As the game works with physical cards, we’d like to start off and mention that you’ll either need a phone that can scan NFC tags, or that you’ll need a separate NFC reader. The latter can be purchased on the Malkyrs official site. Once that’s taken care of, you can start playing, as you’ll have to scan your cards to be able to play the game. The scanning of the cards responds fairly okay, but sometimes there is a bit of delay, both when it comes to scanning and in-game lag when playing. Often you’ll see that it’s your turn, to only have a few seconds left, as there is a 30 second timer per turn. Perhaps when this is increased to one minute, you’ll suffer less from skipping turns due to interference lag.

Now that we have the tiny negative issues handled, we can start off with the game. It feels as if the developers want to add a story later on in the game, creating a single player experience, but we aren’t quite sure about that. You’ll get a tutorial with a bit of background on how the game works, but things are kept on a rather vague level, making you fend for yourself. That last part isn’t necessarily bad, but the cards themselves don’t always properly show what they do. Mostly the cards are either of an offensive or defensive nature, with some other effects thrown in-between. The cards’ artwork is spot-on and the game itself has a lovely appearance.

When playing matches, you simply scan the card which you want to use but you can only use a card a specific amount of times. It’s sometimes hard to see if you should spam attacks or opt for a defensive strategy, but for the most part it feels as if the game is also a bit luck based in a rock-paper-scissors fashion. You can only add ten cards to a deck, under the chosen champion. A champion has a certain ability that gets triggered when certain conditions are met, and a deck can only have a fixed amount of rare and legendary cards, outside the common cards, making sure everyone has a chance. The game feels quite balanced as it is, but at times it feels like you’re mucking about, yet the basics of the game do feel solid and it feels like there is a lot of untapped potential.

Even though a deck list of only ten cards sounds a bit basic and bland, it’s actually quite fun for a game such as this. This allows players to pick the ten cards they like the most, and level them. Yes, you can level up your cards, making them stronger or at least more potent. The leveling system also creates a reason for you to press on, as you can also upgrade your champion and equip him with other stats and abilities.

Like any card game, trading is something that is fun to do. Sadly, momentarily there aren’t that many distribution points or active communities to be found that revolve around this particular title. That being said, as the game works with NFC tags, it also allows the storage of information, which means that when you upgrade a card, it will be linked to that specific real life card. This allows you to trade cards that have upgrades to other cards that may or may not have been upgraded. Thanks to this, you can either boost community members by giving them something powerful, or you can add some value to certain trades by trading against a card that is already upgraded, and thus more powerful.

Conclusion

Malkyrs is clearly still in a development phase, and while some things need a bit more explaining or clarity, we are totally loving what we see. The real cards look great, are qualitative and because of their thickness and plastic nature, they feel durable and qualitative. The game itself is simple to learn, yet hard to master, as sometimes it’s a matter of trial and error which cards work for your deck. Having a small deck to work with makes the game very accessible, but collectors will have their pick of the litter as there are many different champions and card packs to choose from.

1 Comment

[…] It has only been a few weeks since we talked about Malkyrs, an interactive card game that uses the NFC functionalities of your phone, or a NFC reader if your phone does not have a reader. The game combined real cards with an online experience, which proved to be interesting and very simple to get into. The game allows you to choose a champion, and build a deck comprised of out ten cards of varying rarity. Each card can be used several times in the heat of battle, and it’s up to you to know when to strike, to defend or simply go all out and stomp the competition. While the English version of the cards are still very much in production, we have the chance to offer two French introduction packs (Daeris and Lyceran) and three booster packs, allowing you to tinker a bit with said introduction packs. […]